


Stood stammering Elocution

by cosmickaiju



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Loss of Control, Manipulation, Self-Hatred, Spoilers for ep198
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29991828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmickaiju/pseuds/cosmickaiju
Summary: but a distant glimpse of what might once be hope.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Stood stammering Elocution

It’s just another big cosmic joke. Because of course it is, of course he has to make his way back to the Eye on a _literal_ crumbling ladder. And of course Martin remarks on this, an endless litany of critique on this unending apocalypse, and some small, seething, bitter part of him wants to shake Martin. Wants to make him _see_ him, wants to scream (has he ever screamed?), wants to bitingly reply “at least it’s only a ladder for you Martin, at least your entire existence wasn’t on tracks to _This_ by the time you were eight.” But it all seems so cosmically unimportant now, better to just take in these last few instances of companionship.   
  
Still, it’s hard not to get caught up in thought when everyone is focused on not plummeting off this rusty ladder to their deaths. The words echo through his mind, all tied together to form a neat little picture.   
_  
Destroy the Archives, and cut out The Eye’s pupil.  
  
_The Panopticon he’d said. Jonah, he’d said. It had slipped out so easily, he’d barely thought it through. But he must have, right? Martin couldn’t have called him on the bluff, that Jonah wasn’t meant to _be_ that pupil, could he, all tied up and gagged? And Basira didn’t know any better. Then again, Annabelle had said he could survive and well, of course still Martin had hopes for that didn’t he?   
  
Still. Why would he play so easily into her hand, it’s not as he _wanted_ to help her. Then again, the Web had made him, hadn’t it? Maybe somewhere, deep down, he knew. Wanted to hide from those truths in Jonah’s statement, the ones he’d never told anybody, not even Martin. Hears them now, echoing in his mind, in his own voice, but awfully, viscerally different. Even less his own than usual:   
  
  
_Because the thing about the Archivist is that – well, it’s a bit of a misnomer.  
_ _  
_ _It might, perhaps, be better named:_ **_The Archive.  
  
_ ** _Because you do_ **_not_ ** _administer and preserve the records of fear, John. You_ **_are_ ** _a record of fear, both in mind as you walk the shuddering record of each statement, and in body as the Powers each leave their mark upon you.  
  
_ _You are a living chronicle of terror.  
  
  
_ Even if there were a pause, a stopgap brief moment of respite between Jonah’s demise and him subsuming his (rightful, fitting, per--no) place, the fact of the matter remains that the Panopticon is not the only Archive. And Annabelle knows that, as sure as he can be about anything, without Knowing; he knows that. His voice in those tapes they are tethered to, those marks upon his flesh (though it hardly feels like his own, if it ever did) of Them: he is a tether and binding in voice and in flesh as much as he is irrevocably bound to them.  
  
Aye, there’s the rub.  
  
What does he even tell them? He can hear the conversation in his head now— Martin, pleading, frustrated. “But you don’t _have_ to die, Annabelle said so!” And there’s her trick— that talk of her being honest, practicing being honest, that Martin had mentioned, well. Just another sort of show in the end, one to get Martin to buy into a way out, for both of them. Just the thing he wanted to hear— of course he’d want to believe. And he’d played right into it.   
  
  
_And all within an instant comes the gut-felt blow that we no longer know which way we were directed  
  
  
_And again as he stays clinging to that ladder, alone and apart, the world taunts him in his own voice—  
  
  
_And we retch to think of all that way to climb to find nothing but a waving_

_orphaned tip_

_Surmounting all our fears  
  
  
_Is this all there is? He never wanted to be right, never wanted those words stripped from his lungs, laying him bare to be right. But how could they be anything but?  
  
How do you say out loud, to your friends, to your partner, the most searing knowledge of your existence? The wounding, gaping knowledge of being made for this? Splayed, and torn open, drowning in the flood you were always meant to be the door and the trap for. How when you’ve never been vulnerable, could you admit to that, in front of an audience, no less? (In front of your own self, no less?)   
  
No, it’s better to stay him— like she said, like she knew too much inside his own head. Better to give himself up for this, one last chance at helping the world, hoping that maybe this fate would finally, finally bring the relief of doing something good that didn’t just. Cause this whole fearscape in the first place. (And he’s scared too, of losing himself, of losing awareness so much again he cannot even remember who he might even be)   
  
One last leap—  
  
  
maybe he’ll do better than he did with Daisy, this time.


End file.
